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U.S. opens door to a change in blood donation policy for gay men

Howler63 said:
Lots of blood is donated each and every day. Arguing whether high risk groups should be allowed to infect the system is a no-brainer. THe blood supply is just fine right now, so this bull**** isn't important.
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There are severe shortages in blood donations. What do you mean the bood supply is "just fine".


Red Cross Blood Supply Drops to Emergency Levels
Red Cross Blood Supply Drops to Emergency Levels
 
Howler63 said:
Again WHY TAKE THE CHANCE?
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1.)There is a chance straight people may have HIV as well. Should we not allow anyone to donate blood then?
2.)"No specific scientific rationale is provided to justify the 12-month exclusion. As demonstrated above, today’s NAT testing is highly accurate, specific and sensitive and when fortified with a proper behavioral risk-based donor health questionnaire, donor education and broad improvements in public health to reduce HIV transmission any deferral period exceeding the window of possible non-detection by NAT is therefore unfounded."
 
Howler63 said:
Who died? I have NEVER seen a report of an American dying due to a lack of blood.
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What are you? 12 years old? Was this a serious question and statement?
 
Howler63 said:
Are people dying due to a shortage of blood? I've never heard of any.
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I never said that. There are shortages continually. The Red Cross was at my office last week saying they were short of blood and asking us to host a blood drive. I assume that's the difference between a shortage and an outage.
 
Howler63 said:
Who died? I have NEVER seen a report of an American dying due to a lack of blood.
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that isn't the only problematic scenario ffs - “There is always the chance that a physician could postpone an elective surgery if the needed blood products aren’t readily available,” said Dr. Richard Benjamin, chief medical officer for the American Red Cross

represents a significant inconvenience to the patient since 'elective surgery' today can become tomorrow's emergency if untreated, and even if not, they have to take a day off work, bother someone to drive them after, get insurance approval etc. All for avoiding a 1/1.5 million risk they will have to undertake when the surgery is eventually done anyway. **You're more likely to die from the anesthesia than to contract HIV through a transfusion**
 
Howler63 said:
You know why there hasn't been an HIV transfusion since 2008 and rarely before then? Hmmm? Due to gays being BANNED from infecting the blood supply. Jesus, it ain't rocket science. If the system is clean now, why take a chance on tainting it? Just to make homos 'feel' better about being homos?
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absurd, since 25% of new infections and potential donors are not gay men. Of these, 44% do not even know they have HIV. Every single one of them who tries to donate blood will not have to 'check the box' yet every single one of them has been caught in the testing phase after giving blood

This is approximately 10,000 HIV infected blood donations since 2008. All of them were caught in testing

Just like the other 75% would be if they somehow weren't screened out by the new risk assessment (which should have the added bonus of screening out many of those other 10,000)

We get it. To you, only gay blood can be tainted
 
Howler63 said:
You know why there hasn't been an HIV transfusion since 2008 and rarely before then? Hmmm? Due to gays being BANNED from infecting the blood supply. Jesus, it ain't rocket science. If the system is clean now, why take a chance on tainting it? Just to make homos 'feel' better about being homos?
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Uh, yeah, and blood testing that caught thousands of HIV positive blood donations even with teh homos banned from donating had nothing to do with it..... :lamo
 
chromium said:
absurd, since 25% of new infections and potential donors are not gay men. Of these, 44% do not even know they have HIV. Every single one of them who tries to donate blood will not have to 'check the box' yet every single one of them has been caught in the testing phase after giving blood

This is approximately 10,000 HIV infected blood donations since 2008. All of them were caught in testing

Just like the other 75% would be if they somehow weren't screened out by the new risk assessment (which should have the added bonus of screening out many of those other 10,000)

We get it. To you, only gay blood can be tainted
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There you go citing your so called facts and evidence. This issue is all about irrational fears for some respondents.
 
Howler63 said:
You know why there hasn't been an HIV transfusion since 2008 and rarely before then? Hmmm? Due to gays being BANNED from infecting the blood supply. Jesus, it ain't rocket science. If the system is clean now, why take a chance on tainting it? Just to make homos 'feel' better about being homos?
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Wow he really thinks heterosexuals don't have HIV.
 
TheDemSocialist said:
1.)There is a chance straight people may have HIV as well. Should we not allow anyone to donate blood then?
2.)"No specific scientific rationale is provided to justify the 12-month exclusion. As demonstrated above, today’s NAT testing is highly accurate, specific and sensitive and when fortified with a proper behavioral risk-based donor health questionnaire, donor education and broad improvements in public health to reduce HIV transmission any deferral period exceeding the window of possible non-detection by NAT is therefore unfounded."
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1: Not at the rate that homosexuals have it. You did read the CDC data, right?

2: Why rtake the chance of contaminating something so important for no reason other than being politically correct?
 
kamikaze483 said:
I never said that. There are shortages continually. The Red Cross was at my office last week saying they were short of blood and asking us to host a blood drive. I assume that's the difference between a shortage and an outage.
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So, since no one is dying due to a shortage, then the risk imposed by permitting homosexuals to donate blood which have a MUCH higher chance of being contaminated is unnecessary.
 
chromium said:
that isn't the only problematic scenario ffs - “There is always the chance that a physician could postpone an elective surgery if the needed blood products aren’t readily available,” said Dr. Richard Benjamin, chief medical officer for the American Red Cross

represents a significant inconvenience to the patient since 'elective surgery' today can become tomorrow's emergency if untreated, and even if not, they have to take a day off work, bother someone to drive them after, get insurance approval etc. All for avoiding a 1/1.5 million risk they will have to undertake when the surgery is eventually done anyway. **You're more likely to die from the anesthesia than to contract HIV through a transfusion**
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And do we have any documented cases of that happening? If we're going to increase our chance of contaminating the blood supply, it better be for a MUCH better reason than the 'feelings' of homosexuals.
 
chromium said:
absurd, since 25% of new infections and potential donors are not gay men. Of these, 44% do not even know they have HIV. Every single one of them who tries to donate blood will not have to 'check the box' yet every single one of them has been caught in the testing phase after giving blood

This is approximately 10,000 HIV infected blood donations since 2008. All of them were caught in testing

Just like the other 75% would be if they somehow weren't screened out by the new risk assessment (which should have the added bonus of screening out many of those other 10,000)

We get it. To you, only gay blood can be tainted
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And 75% of new cased and excluded donors are homosexuals. For a reason. You get nothing. Homosexual blood has a FAR GREATER chance of being tainted. Why is it so important that homosexuals be permitted to possibly taint the blood supply? If we're already standing such a good chance of taint without them, why add to that chance?

Politically correctness won't fly in the face of AIDS.
 
JasperL said:
Uh, yeah, and blood testing that caught thousands of HIV positive blood donations even with teh homos banned from donating had nothing to do with it..... :lamo
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So if we're already seeing HIV positive donations, why add to that possibility? It's already a problem, why make the problem greater? What does society have to gain? A greater chance of spreading AIDS?
 
Howler63 said:
And do we have any documented cases of that happening? If we're going to increase our chance of contaminating the blood supply, it better be for a MUCH better reason than the 'feelings' of homosexuals.
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if we don't, it better be for a MUCH better reason than the 'feelings' of homophobes
 
Howler63 said:
What else? "Something else" is far too vague.
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Accidents, disease, anything that might affect the immune system.

"Something else" was meant to be vague. There are literally thousands of issues someone might have where they need blood. My link showed that someone in the US needs blood every 3 seconds or something ridiculous. That's because it can happen in a multitude of situations.
 
Nilly said:
Accidents, disease, anything that might affect the immune system.

"Something else" was meant to be vague. There are literally thousands of issues someone might have where they need blood.
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So, has anyone reported these issues? In other words, are we dying because we're maintaining these safety standards? I'll bet not. Now you tell me...why would you want to inject a blood supply that has a marked risk for HIV as opposed to the current supply?
 
Howler63 said:
So, has anyone reported these issues? In other words, are we dying because we're maintaining these safety standards? I'll bet not. Now you tell me...why would you want to inject a blood supply that has a marked risk for HIV as opposed to the current supply?
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When people don't have enough blood, it's usually not due to a low blood cell but to a low fluid volume. This low blood pressure leads to shock. People go in to shock after accidents, people go into shock during surgery. When someone dies due to shock like that, the cause of death is put down to the underlying factor, not due to the low blood pressure.

Now, not all deaths due to this are preventable with more blood, sometimes, you can have as much blood as you want but without a way to get it into the person they'd die anyway. So the numbers you're looking for are impossible to find. Needless to say, having blood saves millions of lives each year. And having more blood allows us to save more. It also prevents us from having to delay surgeries (which does happen). Some blood is always left over at blood banks in case of a emergency (someone bleeding to death) but leaving over that blood means that someone who otherwise could use it cannot. The delay to their surgery can cause whatever they needed their surgery for to kill them.

As for marked risk. Anyone's blood is a marked risk. Nobody is suggesting we don't screen at all. What people are saying is that gay people are at low enough risk that we can use that blood to save lives. You keep saying that we're on some kind of agenda to make gay people feel special. No, not at all. We're on an agenda to save lives. You seem to be the one on an agenda to not have gays give potentially life saving blood.
 
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